Any author, playwright, or screenwriter worth his or her salt knows the golden rule of effective writing: show don’t tell. The narrative of Ruth shows the faithfulness of God unfolding through the ordinary lives of men and women through dialogue, action, and setting. The time of harvest symbolizes the fertility God grants to his people both in terms of bread and offspring. The shroud of darkness over the threshing floor highlights the hidden manner in which God works. The dawn of a new morning cues the audience into the rebirth of hope as Ruth returns to Naomi with a harvest of barley. Ruth offers a powerful corrective to our modern tendency to divorce God’s work from “real life”. God not only writes the stories of our lives, but calls us to live by faith as actors within his unfolding drama, submitting our will to his and playing our part with humility. We live within the same world as Ruth — a world in which God lifts up the humble and inclines his ear to the needy. A world where God acts in subtle and surprising ways. This is Understanding Ruth.

Check out the rest of our Understanding Series: https://www.fouroaksmidtown.com/teachings